With the spread of the wireless Internet and with advances in mobile terminal technology, there has been an increasing number of people enjoying digital players (i.e. digital reproduction devices) by using mobile terminals. Particularly, a mobile terminal employing Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA), which has recently been popularized, has processing gain increasing with an increase in data transmission bandwidth. Therefore, the mobile terminal employing WCDMA enables more convenient use of various digital contents, such as music, games, the movies, electronic commerce, etc.
Before actively using contents through a mobile terminal, service users were satisfied with only the fact that various contents can be used through a mobile terminal. However, with recent advances in communication technology as described above, there has been a requirement for rich media having contents with more various reproduction formats.
When providing a communication service, it is usual that a provider selling particular content bundles different contents to sell the bundled contents together, or provides different contents for nothing, or separately provides a discount coupon, etc., according to a marketing strategy of the provider.
In order to more effectively apply a sales method as described above to consumers, it should be simple, easy, and intuitive to provide additional content according to the degree to which consumers consume particular content. Namely, if the particular content is consumed by a predetermined time or by a predetermined volume, the additional content corresponding to the particular content should also be able to be provided by the predetermined time or by the predetermined volume.
However, in a conventional case, as a scheme for providing particular content along with additional content, a scheme is used which gives authority enabling a consumer to receive the additional content for nothing after downloading the particular content or transmits the additional content to a consumer after downloading the particular content.